Hey everybody, my name's Jason Marker, and I'm one of the freelance writers working on Rogue Trader. I'm finally starting up my Rogue Trader campaign, and I'd like to invite everyone to check out my blog and follow along as hilarity ensues among the fleet of House Machariel. You can find out all about the campaign right here .

It's me again. So, the players survived the first session. Apparently I'm not doing my job correctly. I'll turn it over to our group's log keeper Jacko for the rest of the story.

The Cast:

Marneus Machariel - Rogue Trader

Bors Tovon - Arch-militant

Jotham Lentillus - Missionary

Opiter Castus - Explorator

Anastasia Xanatov - Void-Master

Victrus Karellius - Void-Master

House Machariel, a dynasty in its decline. The warrant of trade that made the first Machariel a Rogue Trader had served the family well. They have been a mainstay in the Expanse for hundreds of years, their history as storied as any other. Now, a new chapter in the Machariel dynasty was being opened. Marneus Machariel, the prodigal son, a man who survived the warp and it's thrice-cursed inhabitants, had returned and been given command of the Solo Drakban , one of the original ships of House Machariel's fleet. As Marneus had been adrift in the Warp for a decade, most of his siblings had been murdered, his father had taken ill, the House had fallen on hard times, and the Warrant had passed to his only surviving sibling, his younger sister. His assignment was seen by his father and sister as a shakedown for both the man and the ship. A test of both their mettle as it were, as Marneus' grap on sanity seemed quite tenuous since his return. With the ship recently out of dry dock and a reduced crew to man her, Drakban would see him and his crew through new adventures.

"Get back to the shuttle!" Bors' thick, guttural accent turned his speech nearly incomprehensible when the he was excited or under stress, and that was certainly the case now. The big man put a burst of heavy bolter fire into the pressure dome above the hab promenade to cause a panic around the running crew. The citizens around them had been having an otherwise normal day in Footfall, the sound of running boots and scattered las fire nothing that concerned. Bolter fire, especially an automatic burst from a thickly muscled thug, was something else entirely. The crowd began running about the causeway, confusing lines of fire for both the officers of the Drakban as well as the gang of eight thugs chasing them. Opiter Castus, Chief Enginseer of the Drakban , had the corpse of the Drakban's Seneschal draped over one huge shoulder, his bolter cradled in his arms as he watched over the other shoulder, his red robes whipping about him. He moved to an overwatch position as Bors moved past, covering the arch militant until a break in the crowd allowed him an opening. He let loose a burst of three bolt rounds that knocked one of their pursuers down, nearly severing his leg.

The mob that was in hot pursuit fired back, hitting Opiter and Bors with stray rounds though most of their autogun slugs found their marks in civilians. The two men, both sheathed in the red livery of Mars over their issued Machariel colors, shrugged off fire as it was absorbed by armor, though Bors grunted as some of the rounds made holes in his carapace weave.

"How much longer do you think they'll be?" Anastasia, Drakban's helmsman and captain's coxwain asked her co-pilot as they waited in the shuttle for the rest of the officers to return from their exchange. Victrus Karellius, nominally D rakban's Master Gunner, could only shake his head in response, not knowing what may be happening with the Lord Captain and the other men. The vox crackled to life, Marneus' voice booming in the cockpit sounding a bit winded, "Prepare the shuttle, we're leaving this blasted rock." Anastasia and Victrus gave each other a look before beginning the launch sequence check list, though a loud crack from the starboard hatch drew their attention. Victrus frowned as he saw spider web cracks appear in the window and another loud crack put a hole in the view port of the shuttle hatch. Victrus grabbed his bolt pistol and peered out of the hatch to see who was doing the shooting, ready to return fire. Someone who looked like dock worker, it appeared, was the one responsible though Victrus had to wonder what a dock worker was doing with a boltgun. Victrus fired in return, keeping the hatch in front of him for cover. Another man joined the fray, putting more rounds against the side of the shuttle but Victrus dodged out of the way, yelling for Anastasia to get the shuttle powered up as quickly as she could.

Bors looked for a position to brace his heavy bolter, spotted a convenient buttress, and began to secure the big gun. Opiter continued to cover him, blasting two more of the thugs apart with his bolter. Marneus turned in their flight, shooting another man down with his laspistol. Jotham Lentillus, the ships young Chaplain, was moving ahead of the group, looking for an ambush location that would serve his holy flamer well. The Emperor smiled down on the Drakban's officers, however, when the thugs decided that being blasted apart by bolters wasn't worth pay they were receiving for this job. The remaining men broke, moving into alleys amidst screaming civilians and the approaching sound of sirens.

Victrus shot one another hired thug disguised as a dock worker, grazing the man as he attempted to sneak around the shuttle. The thug ducked back behind the craft and Victrus yelled to Anastasia, "Fire the engines!" before ducking into the shuttle once more. The plasma thrusters whined for a short moment, the shuttle bucked and there was a piteous bark of pain that was abruptly cut off, followed by the smell of burnt flesh.

Opiter tried to hot wire a delivery vehicle for the crew to make the rest of their journey back to the mooring docks but found the machine spirit of the craft unwilling. So unwilling, in fact, that he was electrocuted for his trouble. He fell unconscious, blue smoke drifting from his person. Bors slung his heavy bolter over his broad back and used his medicae knowledge to slap Opiter awake. He then administered a stimm to get the Opiter moving, which worked surprisingly well considering the tech-priest's size. Marneus opted for another route, drawing his power sword and letting the energy sheathed blade crackle to life. He aimed his ornate laspistol at another vehicle, convincing the driver to stop and allow the crew to mount up. Marneus found the teen pilot amenable to taking him and his crew to the space port, though the fear of a bloody dismemberment surely had something to do with it.

Victrus waited for a target to present itself as he remained in the shadow of the shuttle hatch when Anastasia found the engines of the shuttle cycling down of their own accord. Traffic control aboard the station had taken over controls after the engines fired, looking to prevent a catastrophe. She looked over her shoulder to Victrus, "We're locked down!" and then keyed the vox, advising Marneus of the situation. He told her to patch him through to traffic control and he quickly assumed the position granted him by extension of the warrant of trade. "I am Marneus Machariel, Lord Captain of the Solo Drakban of House Machariel. There has been an attempt on my life and I demand to be allowed to leave this hovel immediately!" Less than two minutes later, Anastasia found the control returned to the cockpit of the shuttle.

The utility craft that Marneus had commandeered was still moving for the shuttle bay but security arrived after Victrus put two more bolts into the last thug. They surrounded the shuttle, armed and ready, demanding that those inside come out. Anastasia wasn't about to surrender control of the shuttle and Victrus was already reloading his bolt pistol when the other officers arrived. Marneus was glad to command them to stand down, and gave them the same story he had used for traffic control. The security detail was sufficiently cowed by the presence of the heavily armed rogue trader and his men. The shuttle was soon away, off to the Drakban , the crew trying to discern who could've ambushed them. There were many, too many to narrow down without further investigation. Jotham gave the corpse of the ship's wizened Seneschal his last rites before the shuttle was able to find its moorings within the Drakban' s huge hold. They called for corpsmen to address wounds and gave a burial at void for the Seneschal's corpse before they finally plotted a return to Port Wander, preparing for the trip through the warp.

The navigator requested Marneus' attention after a few days of the trip had passed. The navigator showed the Lord Captain a warp current holo, keying the tank to display a warp storm encroaching upon their position. Marneus weighed their options before deciding that the ship had to go around and try to make way ahead of the disturbance. More days passed in the warp, the ship skirting the storm but barely keeping ahead of it. The crew were hearing whispers in the corridors of the ancient ship and scratching against the hull. St. Estamael's warp fire crackled along the fields. The storm began battering the ship as the days wore on, causing a rise in the reports of spirits, long dead crewmen, seen manning their stations. The ship was being bucked and things, unspeakable, indescribable, were beginning to be seen in the Geller fields.

With the storm moving much faster than anticipated, the ship rocked as it was hit by something massive, sliding sideways and shaking every hand aboard. The door for the astropathic choir chamber locked down amidst horrific screams, closing as per emergency protocols. A monitor aboard the quarterdeck showed the men and women inside tearing each other apart with their bare hands. Bors was called to the bridge as Marneus began enacting emergency procedures, giving the command to secure the gun decks to Victrus as Anastasia attempted to wrestle the ship under control. Marneus wanted armsmen ready if things got worse. Victrus was able to get his gunnery captains to ready their teams on Bors' orders, preparing for an incursion if it happened. The navigator began to blabber in his seat upon the bridge, his frail body suddenly levitating as his screams reached a crescendo before he passed out. Marneus ordered the crew to buckle down, telling them over the vox to trust in their ship and their own abilities, bolstering their resolve for a time.

Bors had had enough of the noise from the Choir chamber and decided that he would end it. He stalked across the bridge deck and tried to get in, attempting to override the braced controls but he was unable to defeat the containment procedures. He grabbed a junior officer, lifting the man from the deck and commanding him to open the chamber but they could only direct him to the quarterdeck. Bors tromped up the gangway and heard a gunshot over a monitor. Everyone was dead in the choir chamber now, the senior astropath having executed himself. Jotham arrived at the bridge and Marneus asked him to try to rally the crew again, knowing more than anyone aboard how bad a warp incursion could be, but the young chaplain's words largely fell on deaf ears.

Opiter was hard at work in the underbelly of the ship, manning the engineerium and working diligently to restore some of the failing systems in the battered ship. He was able to assuage the machine spirit some and he reported to Marneus that critical systems were holding. He continued to work on the systems to restore the helm controls to the bridge. Marneus brought Anastasia into one of his state rooms with Opiter on MIU vox. He explained the situation to both of them, re-iterating that things could grow much worse but he wanted to explore their options. They brought in the highest ranking navigator left aboard, the senior navigator's brain having leaked from his ears and empty eye sockets. The assembled officers decided to out of warp before the warp storm could carry them any further off course and the order to transition was given.

The gun decks were on high alert still, the guns locked in position and the crews ready to respond to unannounced intruders. The Gellar fields dropped for a moment, flickering while Victrus watched before coming back online with a lifeless intonation from Opiter. A gigantic hand, easily the height of a man, shimmered and dropped onto the gun deck, the sizzling forearm still attached and steaming from where the field had severed it. Jotham and Bors witnessed the huge daemon hand as they made rounds, going about the decks on Marneus' order before the warp engines could cycle down. Jotham was glad to see that lay members of the clergy among the gun decks had performed what rituals they knew, preparing the daemonic appendage for Jothams flamer to finish scouring it from the ship.

The Drakban finally transitioned out of warp, slamming back into real space amongst a small amount of micro-asteroids and other minor debris. The five days in warp space were reconfigured into information gleaned from deep space beacons and the crew only found themselves ahead two days worth of time from when they left. The storm, as rough as it had been, wasn't as unfortunate as it could've been. The crew knew this, Marneus most of all, and the hands upon the bridge began calibrating their location, finding themselves in the far coreward regions of the Cinefus Maleficum, in the shadow of the flickering Cauldron. They had been blown the completely opposite direction from their original planned route. Opiter routed power from the warp drives, shutting them down for maintenance and standing the Drakban in real space for the time being, though no one was sad to hear that.

Meeting up for a simple exchange on Footfall turned into a near cataclysm in the warp. Whomever had decided to ambush Marneus would find their target both alive and thirsting for vengeance.

More hilarity with House Machariel!

The system that the Drakban found herself in was one that seemed to be empty but it's topography was of some interest. Twelve planets inhabited it, divided evenly between solid and gaseous. Four of the solids made up a tumultuous inner core of mass, burnt to a cinder by their proximity to the star. Two of the planets could have been tolerable for life, but scans showed them devoid and barren. The gas giants were unravelling, torn apart by gradual, but powerful, gravitational forces. Those same gravitational anomalies were playing havoc with the sensors but one speck of hope shone through; A moon of the sixth planet seemed to have a space station in stable orbit around it.

While the system was being scanned, the enginseers were hard at work. Opiter was informed that the Gellar field was proving troublesome to repair, some acolytes showing him burned circuits and cogitators. It seemed that the system could work, but it would cannibalize it's own components before failing. With what they had on hand, they could get it to work for around 24 hours before it failed completely. Anastasia was summoned by Opiter, the huge Explorator wanting to inform her of the situation and seek a solution, but she was unable to pinpoint the ships exact location in the greater spatial area and so the decision was made to examine the station for salvage and parts.

Lord Captain Machariel had heard the summons for his void mistress to join the chief Explorator and he became worried. What were they doing, down in the belly of the ship? He summoned Jotham and Bors to escort him to the engine room, intent on confirming or assuaging his fears that perhaps the warp storm had given his crew cause for action against him. The priest and the arch-militant armed themselves and the trio began the long march to the enginearium.

Anastasia and Opiter continued searching for something that could help save the battered ship and, finally, a pair of helmsmen under Anastasia's command came up with a recent map of the region. There was, barely in range of the amount of time the Gellar field would hold, a freelance scrap yard run by salvagers and frequented by rogue traders and pirates alike; SR-651. It was a dangerous gambit as it was almost entirely lawless save for the forces of coin but it was almost certainty that the ship could be repaired and refit there. Opiter found it satisfactory, grumbling that the helmsman who found it should be promoted, rankling Anastasia's pride.

Lord Captain Machariel arrived in the engine room, the heavily armed senior officers at his side making for an impressive entrance. Opiter was glad to tell him of the plan and while Machariel had to rib the giant Explorator for breaking his ship, he was glad to hear that there was a solution nearby. SR-651 was a breakers yard in the old style, employing tens of thousands of labourers to tear star ships apart by hand. The system itself had some peculiar gravitational fields that made it a haven for wrecks. Machariel decided to check the in-system station first, wanting to see if there was loot or parts to be found for free before spending well earned Thrones at SR-651. Anastasia plotted a course, fighting against the various gravity wells but finally coming within safe shuttle range. The planet below the moon was large and almost entirely water, providing a blue backfor the shuttles as they carried teams over to the derelict station.

Debris cluttered around the station, the garbage and detritus of aeons past, and the shape of the station become apparent to Opiter as an old Mk III Wayfarer model. It was once home to eight or ten thousand souls but the augers only picked up some vibrational noise and no signs of life or power. Three teams are assembled, two for the station itself and the last to scan the debris fields for anything useful.

Light years away, at the Machariel home base, were individuals who were yet to learn of their place within the scheme of things aboard the Drakban. Lucius Holt had passed his Astropathy examinations, gaining himself employment with the Machariel dynasty but finding himself without a ship that needed his skills. Jahazer Simoon, a Navigator sent to assist the Machariels thanks to the two families' bonded history, was equally as restless as he found himself between billets, though he occupied himself with study. Livienne Corvus was assisting Old Man Machariel, doing the work a reliable seneschal was expected to perform.

Jotham, Bors and Opiter are forced to use the burning ring and boarding umbilical of the shuttle to melt a hole for passage, finding the station without pressure or atmosphere after finding the main airlock doors sealed shut. The noise is present, but faint, reverberating up through the mag boots of the men. Bors tried to describe the sound but could only liken it to water rattling in pipes. Jotham pressed his helmet to a bulkhead and the sound was familiar to him in part. A Low Gothic chant, akin to the Voidfarer's Prayer but odd and almost alien. The men press onward, their team accompanying them as they moved through the lifeless station, intent on meeting up with the other team somewhere in the middle.

Sometime later, the two teams arrived at the command centre of the station, reporting what they had found thus far. Some mundane items of value to the Machine Cult are examined but the real find is a device found by the secondary team. They show a device that resembles a voxcaster, though it lacks anything that would be recognized as speakers. When touched, anyone could feel it thrumming and they discover it as the source of the chant. A large crate full of power drained data slates was also scrounged and Bors leads a portion of the men back to the shuttle with the bounty. Opiter and Jotham continue to examine the station and the strange voxcaster, Opiter estimating the age of the huge edifice to be at least 6,000 years old.

The three shuttle teams finally come back to the lighter bay, the debris team coming up with nothing of particular value. Parts scavenged from the station means the Gellar field will last for four or five days in the Warp before needing to be overhauled and the order to make way for SR-651 is made. Victrus orders a brief test of the gun batteries on larger debris and finds them in good working order before heading for the lawless system.

Twenty eight hours later, the Drakban exits the Warp at the edge of SR-651, a hailing beacon welcoming them and giving explicit instructions on how to proceed. Anastasia guides the ship through the system, watching debris shower the void shields at points in the serpentine path through the gravity wells. The asteroids that make up the habs of SR-651 are linked by massive chains, tiny specks of motion upon them showing the crew the void born labourers as they toil. The Lord Captain has a short conversation over vox with the 'handlers' of the ship yards and the Drakban is given clearance to dock within a gigantic asteroid.

The moorings at the docking area are already occupied by scores of other ships, some showing pirate colours upon their hulls and others bearing the marks of fellow rogue traders. Machariel makes the decision to keep Bors and Victrus confined aboard the ship, knowing the enmity the two share for the lawless raiders already docked within. The ship itself, however, seems to side with the gunner and the arch-militant, its dorsal batteries tracking a ship nearby without anyone giving the command. Victrus is able to calm the machine spirit of the ship and rein it in, Jotham applying a blessing just for good measure, though their target's captain is understandably angry.

The Lord Captain disembarks, meeting with the yard's void-master to negotiate for parts and labour. The man knows the Machariel clan well, having met the elder Machariel, and he gives Marneus a warm welcome and permission for his officers to take their liberty, so long as the stations neutrality isn't threatened. Lord Captain Machariel inquires about an astropathic choir and they do have one he can utilize to send a message home. He does so with haste, making sure the message is concise but comprehensive and giving the ship's crew a chance to sight see as they travel to the hab the choir calls home. Anastasia notes a Tyrant class battleship being torn down by hand with thousands of labourers crawling over it.

The message was received and parsed quickly back at the Machiarel home station and Lucius was delivered a summons to meet the elder himself, Lord Talfore Machariel. He arrives at his chambers, finding Jahazer and Livienne there and the three are brought in together. They're told they have two hours to collect their belongings and then to report to a fast transport bound for SR-651. Lucius and Jahazer are glad for the assignment and leave to do as they've been ordered. Lord Talfore retains Livienne for a moment, giving her a data slate and telling her it contained the information she would need. Jahazer was eager to put his education to use, reviewing his own knowledge of the area to which they'd be travelling.

Marneus was able to find a lounge within the asteroid habs to await an astropathic response, seeing the livery and colours of trading dynasties he recognized. Anastasia and Jotham had accompanied the Lord Captain and Jotham was keen to overhear a conversation between a rogue trader and a man in plainer garb. The sharp eyed priest noticed the man flash a badge, showing himself to be a member of the Inquisition. Other notables were a young woman and a muscle grafted henchman at a table watching Marneus with some mix of guile and apprehension. Anastasia pointed out to Marneus that the livery worn by a few people in the lounge were those of Aspyce Chorda, a ruthless rogue trader with a heart of ice.

Anastasia did recognize someone else, a rake named Kort whom she had met some time before. They exchanged pleasantries, Kort's high opinion of himself showing through the interaction. While he didn't think much of Marneus, the man did have measure of respect for the Machariel dynasty itself. Marneus chequered personal history, it seemed, had gotten around and the man found himself something of a social leper. It wasn't long before he was given messages from both the choir and the harbour master of the station.

While SR-651 has the facilities, they do not have all of the requested parts. Parts will have to be salvaged from hulls to meet Marneus' needs, a fair bit of time involved in that process. The expense would be huge, crippling almost, but Marneus is able to convince the harbour master to do the work and provide the parts at a deep discount. Eight days, minimum, is the estimate given for the repair period and the parts begin trickling in. Opiter keeps tight control of who can gain access to the workings of his ship, coordinating crews in the cargo bays to get the parts where they're needed.

It's several days later when Marneus is alerted that another Machariel ship has entered the local system, making her way for the docks. The Lord Captain has Opiter and Jotham prepare a report on the derelict station they had scavenged from, though the voxcaster is kept out of it. Opiter, for all his knowledge and experience, can't discern how the device is powered but he assures Jotham it's likely a Mezoa-pattern Orthoproxy, a guess wrapped around a lie.

The package that had been promised to come to Marneus' aid is revealed to be a new navigator, seneschal and astropath. Lucius, Jahazer and Livienne had used their time in the warp to get to know one another better, though some prodding was required to keep Jahazer conversing. Jotham is pleased to see Jahazer, the two being cousins, and he's glad to speak of his relative's exploits and aptitude. Livienne informs Marneus of orders from his father to repair the Drakban and return home as quickly as they can.

The Lord Captain treats his new officers to a formal dinner, hearing the chilling tale of the Voidspear, a ship upon which Jahazer served that suffered a complete Gellar field failure. Victrus relates the tale of how he encountered Bors while the two travelled on the spaceship Medway, a ship that nearly fell to a vicious pirate attack. The crew is given some time to stand-down before the voyage back home is undertaken, and the officers go about their business. Livienne travels to the station and finds that Marneus' bad reputation has already tarnished that of the Drakban's crew. Opiter had suggested better rations for the men as a reward for keeping the ship together and Livienne was charged with the task of obtaining them. She finds success in that matter, bringing aboard the improved rations to improve morale. The purser that accompanied her, however, noted that it seemed they were being followed. Livienne slyly glanced at their pursuers, noting a woman dressed in the finery one might expect of a trader and a muscle grafted bodyguard accompanying her.

Livienne arranged to be met at the docking bay and she briefly came aboard, only to sneak back out to see if she could spot the two. She did, but they became wise to her plan, losing her in the busy station thoroughfares. Livienne decided to take it upon herself to find out who they might've been, convincing a dock boss to divulge that the woman was indeed a rogue trader, her companion her XO, and that she carried the warrant of trade for House Yefremova. Her ship was a frigate slightly larger than the Drakban itself.

Jahazer was making himself at home in his new berth, finding his subordinate Navigators to be competent, though one was clearly the sharper sword in the scabbard. Lucius was disheartened to find the notes and logs of the old astropath woefully incomplete and given some indication of Warp taint. The logs make hardly any note of the choir, but their deceased status rendered the point moot.

Jahazer was glad to begin plotting a course back home however, Marneus testing out his new navigator. Things were skewed some but the trip stretched five days and the Gellar field held strong. The course deposited the ship into the tail of a Warp storm, bending the course of the Drakban such that the transition back to real space was uncomfortably close to a gas giant on the edge of the system. Anastasia manoeuvred the vessel around it, sliding past its gravity well and letting the ship rock as it glided into the inner system with the help of Machariel traffic control. Home at last, the Drakban had survived, but how would Marneus fare after reporting to his father?

What, no Navigator player? I think they are one of the coolest player types, and yet once again her is an example where people can't go beyond the fighter-magic user types.

I take a heavier hand in party creation when it comes to this. Their needs to be a one of each basic type in my opinion, if possible due to numbers. The only type I do not care gets played or not is the Missionary.

JasonMarker said:

Please, please, PLEASE do an actual play podcast!

The few that are out there have just been teases! Your campaign sounds like it would rock on iTunes! Or wherever!

L-

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

Yes, we have a Navigator. Jahazer Simoom is our Navigator. It took until the second session to get him in there, though.

Ah good. I read the story, but was not certain an actual player was playing the Navigator. Are you using any of the new Navigator powers?

Right now he's just a straight-up main book Navigator. We're all of us new to the system, and still getting used to it. Oh, by the way, the podcast caught the fancy of one of my guys, the one who actually writes these logs, and we're looking into producing one for you all.

Okay, y'all. Here's the first in a series of podcasts relating to After the Gold Rush. We can't actually get real-time play recordings because, well, we suck. This'll have to do. Enjoy.

After the Gold Rush

And you had to post it while I was on Vacation! Grrrrr! *GRIN*

Looking forward to checking it out, and hopefully seeing more from you and others!

L-

I realize that I've been slack in not posting our logs. Here's some from the past few sessions brought to you by Zorak, who is playing Jotham the Missionary.

The Warp is a Harsh Mistress

We start our session at Machariel Base, located in the not notably scenic Telluride system. Machariel Base stretches for dozens of kilometres, capable of fitting ships and housing a full range of commercial activities. The nearest planet masses less than Mercury, and basically provides a lot of space to put stuff. As we pull in, The Boss summons Lord Captain Machariel and bridge crew to the flagship, Arkhamina's Lament .

Aboard Lament , the Lord Captain gets summoned to his father's stateroom, while Jahazer Simoom (Navigator), Livienne (Seneschal), Bors (Arch-militant), Victrus (Void-Master), and Jotham (Missionary) get directed to a briefing room, and Opiter (Explorator) gets sent to the Machariel's Tech-Priest Majoris.

Talfore Machariel shows little emotion, but his son can discern his father's pleasure at his return. Marneus explains about the trap at Footfall that set our recent adventure in motion. He then asks about the lost space station that we found. The Old Man accepts that Marneus did the best he could in a lousy situation, and decides to make Marneus' command of the Solo Drakban permanent. Talfore asks for an accounting of Marneus' officers, and suggests that someone ought to be appointed XO. He also reminds his son that as the Lord Captain of a Machariel fleet vessel, he represents the family wherever he goes, and while he remains junior to his sister in the family, Talfore suggests that he may have room to exercise his own judgement if her decisions seem less than sensible.

Marneus expresses a desire to recover the lost space station he found. With a couple of heavy lift ships, it could be moved to a more useful location, and refitted as a deep space fueling depot for the Machariel Fleet. Talfore gives his permission to begin the work, but not a blank check.

The Machariel's Flag Seneschal debriefs the majority of the Drakban's officers, and sees nothing to take issue with. We report back to our ship none the worse for wear. Opiter and the Tech-Priest Majoris exchange courtesies in binary, and the Majoris entrusts Opiter with a message for a Tech Priest at Port Wander. Opiter, in turn, asks for and receives a blessing for upgrading his mind impulse unit to a fancier one that will sync better with the ship.
Meetings complete, Jahazer plots a course for Port Wander. He has a moment of doubt or two, but he gets us there just fine. The journey will take us first to Footfall, and on the way there, we encounter another Warp Storm. Through the judicious expenditure of a Fate Point, our Navigator drives us through a small gap in the storm, and we arrive at Footfall in only nine days, against a planned travel time of 30 days. The storm does create a slight complication with our arrival, as we reenter real space in the corona of a star.

Commander Xanatov, more or less expecting this sort of error, takes the conn without a murmur and sets about moving the ship in a generally non-Sunward direction. She tries to skip us out of the Sun, but there's a hull breach in engineering. The engines go offline. The ship drifts. Opiter attempts to persuade the Machine Spirit that it should restart the drives. We lose 2 crew population and 5 morale. Also the Enginaerium lacks gravity in some parts and pressure in the others. Opiter cannot get the engines on line, but then Bors shows up and, um, encourages the men to try a little harder, and then better things begin to happen.

On the bridge, we receive a hail. A dead-sounding voice repeatedly asks, "Blessings of the Omnissiah be upon you. Do you require assistance?" As it happens, we could truly use assistance, and not in any small amounts. The Mechanicus heavy cruiser Foresight passes between us and the sun, giving us a measure of protection from the horrible, horrible fire. Victrus takes a moment to verify that our macrocannon batteries behave. They do. Foresight takes us under tow. We are saved, at least until further notice.

Marneus transfers the call from the Tech-Priests to Opiter, who begins to converse with them in binary. The Captain of the cruiser expresses disbelief that something as old as Drakban can still fly. After Opiter explains the nature of our difficulties, their Captain tells us he'll be sending a repair party. Before Opiter can ask about flight arrangements, they teleport a half dozen Tech-Priests and about twice as may Skitari aboard. They ask to be taken to the ship's Cogitators, and begin messing with them, forcing Opiter to try to keep up in hopes of preventing any sabotage. The Tech-Priests restore about 60% of our realspace drive power, and express an interest in our antiquated but beautiful Jovian-Pattern drive systems. The Lord Captain puts a warning in his Navigator's permanent record, notifying Navigator Simoom that immediate improvement will be required to save his career.

The Captain of Foresight informs Marneus that repairs have been completed and casts off tow, teleporting their repair team home. Marneus, in turn, calls down to the engine room and informs them they will have half a day to effect additional repairs before we resume our journey. Jahazer comes to the bridge and protests at his reprimand, attempting to shift blame to the poor structure of the ship's hull. Jotham offers to pray with him, but the navigator prefers to meditate in silence. Jahazer stands revealed as a closet heretic.

On the second leg of our journey, on to Port Wander, Jahazer does a fine job, right up until it comes time to bring the ship out of warp. We leave the warp to find ourselves a mere three km away from another ship - which is in the middle of a firefight with pirates. All hands to action stations! Four Hazeroth-class raiders swarm around a frigate. Seneschal Corvus recognizes the frigate as the Litvyak of House Yefremova.

Before Victrus can even get clearance from the bridge, the dorsal cannons have already engaged the pirates. Drakban likes to editorialize. Under Victrus' control, the dorsal macrocannon batteries absolutely maul one of the raiders, blasting its dorsal decks apart in one titanic salvo. Despite Jotham's personal encouragement, the ventral batteries miss. Litvyak 's lances shatter the drives on another raider. One of the raiders lands a brutal hit on Drakban , cutting our hull integrity by over 60%. Xanatov attempts to bring the Drakban onto a course to improve our firing solution, but instead, we actually bump into our raider quarry, knocking both ships off course. Encouraged by Jotham, and with their firing solution improved by Jahazer's Navigator powers, our ventral batteries deliver some significant damage to yet another raider. Drakban 's shields and armor absorb their return fire. Litvyak takes laser damage just forward of her engines. Xanatov rolls Drakban to let the dorsal battery engage a different target and nearly annhilates her, setting her adrift and afire, damaging and depressurizing her engines, destroying her life support, her internal gravity, and depowering her communications. Victrus promises beer to all the gun crews when next they get liberty. Litvyak offers us the chance to take the last raider, and when we decline, she takes out the last one herself. That leaves three hulks to salvage (one of the raiders being utterly atomized), and there's a Machariel trade flotilla at Port Wander that might be available to help strip the wrecks. Seneschal Corvus negotiates for the rights to salvage two of the hulks. Jotham, Livienne, Bors, and Marneus all go aboard Litvyak to negotiate.

The Yefremovas welcome us with full honors. A few of us glimpsed Lidiah Yefremova at SR-651, but seeing her in the flesh, we're struck by her commanding demeanor. Her XO, Yuriy, is the size of some small vehicles, which quality becomes even more startling in the cramped quarters of a frigate. They take us to their staterooms, which have nice fittings, but a very minimalist style. Marneus would go a different way, one involving gubbins. She has not brought such a large party to the negotiations as Marneus has, choosing either not to involve her Seneschal and Purser, or not having such officers aboard. Jotham does that irritating religion thing, and then the dickering begins. Marneus suggests that Drakban did most of the work, but Lord Captain Yefremova uses her holotank to demonstrate that the raiding party started with six ships. They did a little heavy lifting of their own. Livienne suggests that each ship be allowed to salvage her own kills, which still works out to two salvages per ship. Livienne notices that their small talk aims at figuring out who this Marneus cat is, and he comes off a little eccentric. She feeds us, and entertains us, and reads Marneus a bit despite Livienne's attempts to block her conversation. Livienne tries to fish a little bit in her conversation, but gets nothing of use.

Free Press and Riots

Pulling in, we see Port Wander full of ships, as per usual. They send out a tug to pull us in to a mooring slip, and we put together our shore party to negotiate dry dock and other requirements. Lord Captain Machariel trys to talk someone into taking us straight to dry dock, but station control rebuffs his initial inquiries. Jahazer Simoom calls some of his Navy contacts and helps expedite our movement to dry dock, saving quite a bit of time. The Lord Captain then sends Seneschal Corvus to negotiate the actual costs of our repairs. The Captain also asks Astropath Holt to send a report of our journey back to Machariel Base. He gets an acknowledgement back within ten minutes, but no further instructions.

Victrus and Boatswain Horrellian make a roster for shore leave. Victrus also decides to attempt to do some recruiting while ashore. Jotham dons his raiment in preparation for preaching on the station. Sadly he decides to preach outside the beer halls. He chooses the wrong location and starts a riot. Apparently Port Wander does not boast a real pious flock.

Seneschal Corvus shuttles to the repair yard to discuss fees with the Dockmaster(s). Navigator Simoon goes with, and does a fine job of drawing attention away from our ship spy. Still, she notices that a not-unhandsome young man keeps checking her out. She commits his face to memory but chooses not to engage him in conversation. After a wait of about 45 minutes, she finally meets with a dock official. He asks her name and knows Jahazer's name just from hearing the name of the Solo Drakban , so he clearly knows the ships in his yard quite well. Sadly he cannot offer anything better than weeks in drydock to fully repair the ship.

Lord Captain Machariel and Bors Tovon go clothes shopping. Well, the Lord Captain goes shopping, and Bors and his buddies go along. His regular clothier, Henrietta Volt, a woman whose bizarre life extension habit has allowed her to push three centuries, still looks in her prime. He asks her to update his uniform in the interests of recruiting. It's purely about business, seriously. He also asks for similarily updated uniforms for all ship's officers. She expresses some concern about the prospect of outfitting Bors, but Marneus assures he he's not an officer. Oh, but surely he'll need proper garb for his honor guard... and sure enough, Marneus can't say no to pretties. He wastes all sorts of time talking about hats, sashes, buttons, etc, etc, and the honor guard just have to sit there watching the Captain spend money. Eventually they come up with a new honor guard uniform which looks impressive as can be, though perhaps a little uncomfortable, and Marneus orders a set for the full honor guard. Bors presents a little more challenge, but Marneus Machariel's chosen couture advisor can handle any challenge. It's going to be expensive, but for the Lord Captain, it's worth it.

Opiter goes ashore with some armsmen and some Tech-Priests, looking to meet with Magos Senioris Esteban Matthias. Judging by his workshop, the Magos Senioris seems to work mostly on cybernetics. Matthias has many years and many tendrils, and as he regards Opiter, our ship's cyborg can almost feel himself being scanned. He briefly examines the data slate Opiter hands him, and then things really begin to happen. He asks what Opiter makes of the device, and Opiter explains his theory about it being an archaeotech Orthoproxy. The Magos Senioris appears not to agree and asks what Opiter knows of "Orchestrions" or "thumpers." He also compares it to a music box. They're deployed as warning devices. Opiter gives them the coordinates to the station where we found it - the traitorous bastard. Matthias then asks who Opiter truly serves. Opiter assures him he serves the Omnissiah. Matthias shrugs that off as an evasion and demands that Opiter tell the Mechanicus everything he learns about the station, getting them the message however he can. On a different note, he asks whether Opiter knows Engineer Taber of the cruiser Foresight, and when Opiter confirms, he asks about Solo's modified drives. Opiter, in turn, brings up our need for more crew. Matthias offers assistance but requires the opportunity for the Mechanicus crew to study the ship fully. He also requires that the Orchestrion remain.

Marneus then goes to see his Imperial Customs Agent contact. The Captain wants a nice plasma pistol. His friend cannot locate such a thing. Suspensors he can get however. Now Bors will have a heavy bolter that doesn't need to be braced on anything. Carnage will surely ensue. Then, for the sake of asking, Marneus asks for some tasty new macrobatteries. Ha hah hah. No.

Lucius finds himself with nothing he needs to be doing and a whole station to loiter in. He goes looking for a hive of astropathic scum and villainy, or failing that, someplace reminiscent of his horrible, filthy, degenerate, hive world home. He finds "The Wormhole." Perfect! A Warrant Officer of Lucius' acquaintance owns the place now, and keeps it at an appropriate level of dissolution. Many current and former crew of the Royca drink there.

When Marneus returns to Drakban , he receives an invitation from Lidiah Yefremova to dine with her and her associates at a private supper club, in a week's time.

After a couple days, one of Victrus' watch leaders reports that there have been desertions, including one entire watch crew. Victrus reasons that an entire watch crew would not desert all at once. He goes to Bors, who calls his buddy Solonius Hubb. Bors introduces Victrus, and explains our problem. Solonius has seen our (highly distinctive) uniforms before... and he thinks the missing men were pressed by the Navy. Nothing we can do about that.
Bors and Victrus go looking for crew from the Medway . Victrus finds a gun crew he used to lead, just hanging around, drinking in a bar. They welcome him to their drinking crew, and catch up on recent changes. He finds out that one of the old watch officers from Medway now works in the recruiting centers on the station.

Bors, sadly, runs into Boatswain Jerron, an old un-friend from the Medway . The Boatswain, though taken aback by Bors' presence, manages to be civil, and tells Bors where to find some officers. Sadly the officers aren't former shipmates, so Bors goes to the impressment center.

After the riot, the Arbiters take Jotham aside and give him a talking to. He advises the preacher to move to the midscale merchandizing areas. Jotham moves to a nicer part of the station, and from then on he brings some of the deacons from Drakban's laity along to enforce the Emperor's Will. When crewmen from a rival ship try to give them some static, a melee breaks out, and Jotham ends up cutting off someone's leg.

Later on, the Arbiters contact the Lord Captain and asks him to reel in the preacher, who seems to start a riot wherever he goes. Marneus contemplates telling them to solve it themselves, but opts not to.

Bors and Victrus go to talk to Lt. Hull in the recruiting office. He sort of remembers them from the Medway days, and offers them enlistment. They decline and ask about the pressed men. Oh yeah, they're pressed, and we're not getting them back. Bors and Victrus try to lean on him a little bit, reminding him of old times and how Bors saved his life, but it's a hard slog. Eventually he slides them a data slate with a message on it, while telling them out loud that he can't help them. The data slate lists the favorite locations for the press gangs to go, which we immediately make off limits to the crew. The slate also has a name and a contact number on it, presumably a recruiting contact.

Seneschal Corvus suggests that recruiting could be much improved by advancing prize money to the crew. If Drakban crew roam the station spending money like water, people will be scrambling to join up and share our good fortune. The problem is that we also need money to repair the ship. Marneus puts the decision off.

Livienne and Opiter review the haul of dataslates we captured. One of them contains Mechanicus encryption, but we can't crack it. Opiter puts the ship's cogitators on it.

Marneus calls a staff meeting. We discuss the crew issue, and Marneus approves early distribution of prize money. We've had no new word from home. The Captain discusses the warning from the Arbiters with preacher Jotham and Jotham announces his intention to ask the station Ecclesiarchy to overrule the Arbiters. Opiter explains that he cannot determine the exact nature of the litany of the Orchestrion or what it warns against. Jotham offers to research that litany and see if it has any specific connotations that might be helpful. Marneus reminds all senior staff that everyone but Opiter must be at the dinner at Yefremova's supper club.

Your faithful correspondent arrived late and unpacked his laptop just in time to hear people discussing intruders aboard the Solo Drakban . Anastasia Xanatov shoots at someone with a bolt pistol, but misses. She then takes the opportunity to use her micro-bead to alert the rest of the bridge crew of armed intruders on deck 19. The watch lieutenant sounds condition one throughout the ship. Anastasia then attempts to flee but catches a lasgun round.

Bors Tovon and Victrus Karellius come as quickly as they can and catch hostile servitors in a crossfire. Bors' freshly suspensor-mounted heavy bolter lays down four hits in his first burst, which one might reasonably suppose would hurt. Righteous Fury ensues and Bors empties his entire magazine, which more or less deletes the entire enemy contingent. In the interests of not spending all night giggling, we decide not to describe each critical hit in detail. Victrus never saw Bors so happy. He'll also be stone deaf for five hours, due to the incredible amount of closs-quarters noise. Even Anastasia, somewhat further away, will be deaf for a while. Amazingly, one of the boarders survived. He gets taken to the medicae room.

Opiter Castus finds a different firefight to involve himself in. These boarders came without a servitor, and both sides of the fight wear Machariel livery. Luckily, Opiter knows his people on sight, so he can pick out the boarders easily. One of the poor bastards he shoots is carrying demo charges, which detonate. Suffice to say that nothing good happens to the bad guys at this juncture.

Livienne Corvus receives reports of conflict in one corridor of the ship, only to discover that her security cameras have been compromised. Seneschal rage ensues.

Lucius Holt goes to the brig to interrogate the prisoner. Turns out he's part of a criminal crew which was hired by a different criminal crew to infiltrate the ship. They were waiting for us - they knew we were coming to Port Wander and they set up a wee trap for us. The raid has been in the planning stages for ten days. We docked four days ago. They had good intel. The prisoner's own group were about twenty strong, and then we don't know how many different gangs the prime contractor might have hired- the prisoner knows of one other gang, also about twenty strong, but he has no knowledge of the greater scheme. This prisoner came aboard two days ago, and they spent that time acting like normal crewmen, infiltrating the ship, taking advantage of our extremely low crew size and our desperate need to recruit more crew. They were sent to steal weapons from Drakban and them at a warehouse, which location Lucius notes.

Jotham Lentillus, leading a party of armsmen toward a reported incursion, sees a party of ghost armsmen walk through some bulkheads. After a brief reflection, he decides that trying to exorcise the ghost of some voidman's grandfather must not take priority over defeating the borders. When he finally locates an enemy group, he finds himself 50 meters away, carrying a weapon with a 20 meter range. That's just bad planning right there. The boarders throw flashbangs, but due to luck and fanaticism, friendly forces remain unaffected. The hostile servitor begins to close on our position. Somehow the hulking brute miraculously avoids flamer fire the first time, eats it the second time, and then ends up in melee combat. After a few inconclusive exhanges, Jotham severs the servitor's arm and bisects his torso, filling the hallway with burning intestinal gore. Meanwhile, the armsmen laying down suppressive fire for Jotham, inspired by the Emperor's grace, fell the remaining bad guys with lasgun fire. Two of the armsmen were killed, surely acceptable losses for wiping out an entire enemy squad.

Livienne and Lord Captain Machariel work together to route our security parties toward the threats or ideal interception vectors. One team was sent to poison our water supply, but fortunately they were forstalled. We end up with four additional prisoners, who immediately suffer the unfriendly attentions of the ship's astropath. Astropath Holt cuts through their brains like a multimelta through a jello mold - and discovers that we took an enemy leader prisoner. With Livienne's help, he discovers that a mercenary broker hired the infiltrators, and of course he gets the broker's identity. Their mission was to cause confusion and damage on the ship, although other bosses may have had more specific missions. This broker often hands them jobs from the Imperial Navy. Hrmrmrmrmmmmm.

We decide to get ourselves together and go looking for the broker. At Jahazer's suggestion, Livienne complains to the dockyard about explosions aboard and possible substandard work, hoping to make it look like we don't really know what happened. Meanwhile, Marneus lines up the crew with the intention of executing everyone without the exact right uniform. Everyone shows up in the right uniform and nobody gets shot. Jotham preaches to the ship's crew about how a lack of uniform doctrine can give rise to heresy. Beware anything that is different! Victrus finds a few people on liberty who don't belong to the ship - presumably infiltrators who bailed on the job. He also scans lockers and generally goes over the ship with a fine-toothed comb.

Marneus, Bors, Victrus, Jotham, Lucius, and Jahazer go to see the broker. Just a little social call, nothing big. The roll over to the Chamber of Gold and find our guy's office, in a building where a bunch of other brokers also have offices. The broker's secretary asks if we have an appointment. Marneus assumes a slightly sneering tone and asks if we need one. Apparently some goons are in line ahead of us. Jahazer hits those cold-eyed fighting men with the Lidless Stare. Neither one seems bothered overmuch. Marneus offers them Thrones to take a walk for an hour, and they take that deal. Then the whole scheme falls slack as the secretary explains that the boss isn't in. Sure enough, maybe 15 minutes later he arrives to find his lobby full of Rogue Trader entourage. He's an older guy, clearly successful, confident, used to dealing with important people, and gives no sign of surprise at our presence. He invites Marneus into the office, and Marneus enters, accompanied by his two psykers. The broker, one Malachai Jord by name, says the information we want is privileged. Marneus claims not to care about such things. Jahazer explains that the information will be needed for legal purposes. Malachai says he'll give it up if the legal procedures are followed, but we'll need a Litigant. Marneus fails to push him around using ordinary verbal threats, so he turns to Lucius and says, "Do what you need to do."

Let's carry on, shall we?

The people who were sitting inside the office roll initiative. Lucius goes first and begins probing Mr Malachai Jord. As Lucius works, Jahazer's teeth suddenly become needle-sharp, due to a sudden warp mutation. No, that's not disturbing at all. Don't worry about it. Malachai hits his panic button and floods the room with gas. Whups! The panic button also triggers the servitors in the outer office. Jotham responds by setting both on fire. That has fairly little effect, so Bors uses his heavy bolter to destroy everything. Servitors, walls... the works. He ladles out so much damage that the people inside the office take some shrapnel, although their armor soaks most of it.

Lucius probes deeply enough to detect Malachai's immediate fears. Said fears do not surprise. Jahazer goes to grab the broker, thinking to drag him out of the office, but a quick burst of digi-flamer fire forces him to jump aside. Lucius continues to rummage around in Malachai's brain, but has not yet penetrated deeply enough to get what we want. The broker, focusing on the immediate threat, fires a digi-melta at Jahazer, but misses. Lucius discovers that Malachai was himself hired by a broker, meaning we're only a little closer to the truth. We leave before the Arbiters get there.

Within the hour of our return to the ship, a great many Navy Armsmen turn up on our mooring slip. Marneus gets Bors, Jotham, Jahazer, Victrus, and Livienne Corvus, and prepares to greet the Navy. He sends Livienne out to meet with them first, and she invites Commander Jantheen aboard to discuss the situation. Livienne tries to assure her that she doesn't need an escort, but gets nowhere. The Commander wants answers, so Livienne introduces her to the Lord Captain, Jahazer, and Victrus.

On the bridge, Anastasia notices a couple Navy ships loitering about, keeping an eye on us, and so advises the Lord Captain.

As the Lord Captain enters, the Command stands and explains the difficulties entailed by assaulting a citizen in his office. Marneus parries by making an official complaint about the attack on the ship while in dry dock. Livienne then explains that in the course of our business visit, Malachai's men attacked, and our actions were defensive. Possibly the report made about the incident was not quite factual - and perhaps we were only being friendly in visiting the broker informally instead of working through the legal system. As a ship, we feel terrible about the entire affair and the affront thus dealt to the rule of law on the station. Victrus raises the point that we have a name for people who try to steal starships - we call them pirates. Victrus really hates pirates. He hates them a lot. The Commander takes her leave and assures us that she'll be in contact with us.

We also discover that due to temporary financial irregularities, repair work will be put on hold until transfers from Machariel HQ come through.

Thankfully the ongoing investigation does not impair our ability to attend the Yefremova's dinner party. It's quite nice. Since our issues with Malachai Jord have become public knowledge, Livienne makes sure our version of the story gets out. Unfortunately Lidiah Yefremova sees right through her, so her admiration stems more from respect for our ability to stick to our story than any actual sympathy. Livienne also appeals to Rogue Trader solidarity, suggesting that all Traders need to make sure they have lots of security when in this port. Lidiah introduces Marneus and Livienne around the party, leaving the rest of Drakban' s officers to their own devices. Lucius looks around the party to see if whoever hired those mercs might be here, but has no luck. He does see the officer that Malachai dined with recently, which he mentions to Livienne and Marneus. They make a note of the identity of this Commander Stark, commander of the Imperial Frigate HDMS Suntreader but don't take any action right away. By reputation, Stark drives his frigate's crew hard, and utterly devoted to the emperor. Jahazer hangs out with Imperial military, especially the Navigator.

Some secret stuff happens with Anastasia and one of the party guests.

Jahazer draws Jotham aside and introduces him to Commander Stark. Oh ho! We trade platitudes and such, and then Jahazer gets him to admit that the Navy has a Crusade in the works, into the Malfian sub-sector. Stark says the Crusade should be leaving within the week, and once the squadron leaves, his recruiting contacts might be of use to us. W00t.

Marneus' mingling gives him the impression that the Yefremovas are not doing so well.

Anastasia tries to discern people's attitudes toward House Machariel. People seem a little wary - they don't quite know what to expect from us. She also finds out that the Yefremovas don't have a Seneschal on Litvyak .

Jotham makes an ass of himself trying to show off how much he learned at priest school. A roll of 99 on charm yields very boorish behavior indeed.

Yuriy comes over to Bors to talk big violent guy shop. The conversation goes a little awkwardly, since neither has any real social skills, but they're willing to fake it together.

Jahazer finds out that Litvyak is the Yefremova's only warp-capable ship.

Victrus discovers that neither the Arbiters nor Navy really like brokers all that much.

Returning to the ship, we discover a significantly elevated Armsman and Arbiter presence on the slip. Victrus and Anastasia send them coffee and sandwiches to thank them for protecting our ship. Anastasia gets a slightly chilly reception from the officers, who presumably fear a banana in the tailpipe, but eventually they warm up to us.

The next day, Jotham begins a habit of preaching on the mooring slip every day. It eventually becomes a thing - people stop by to get coffee and donuts while he preaches, and the lay deacons try to recruit.

We then go about recruiting our crew, using the recruiting agents we got from Stark. With their help, we do eventually bring in a proper crew again.

Bors goes under the knife and is out of commission for eight days. On the plus side, he now has a good-quality cybernetic hearing system & implanted microbead. Opiter gets upgraded to a good-quality mind impulse unit (to replace his old, lower-quality one) and spends three days in the body shop.

Bosun Jasper Horrellian shows up in Victrus' office with a crewman. The sailor and his buddies got jumped, which is not necessarily uncommon during leave. The attackers had shock mauls and large numbers, which is less normal. They also gave us a message: stay out of certain areas on the station, and keep our press agents out of those areas, or things will get worse. The kicker: Victrus recognizes the name of the attackers. They call themselves legitimate businessmen, but it's a front for pirates. The Lord Captain responds the only way he knows how: he orders us to immediately send a larger group to that area, ready for a fight. Obviously the rest of the crewman are told to keep out of those areas and move only in large groups.

Our difficulty with Malachai has revealed divisions on the station, as the authorities have both asked additional questions, and apologized for doing so. The leader of the Arbiters has complained that the Navy can't decide whether to go after us or not, and they're sick of the Navy's indecision. Meanwhile, Malachai has decided to sue House Machariel. Obviously that requires us to send our captives to Machariel HQ so that they can testify whenever the hearings occur. Sucks to be them!

Marneus also buys supplies to help us get the station going again.

Livienne reports that someone matching the description of the person who hired the broker has been found... spaced.

Xanatov takes the ship back to space. She's a little rusty, and the ship handles a little different with all the repairs made, so her piloting doesn't set a new standard or anything. Who cares? We're back in space. Jahazer then plots our warp route to Footfall, crafting a course that gets us there in only half a day. Perhaps due to the recent overhaul of the ship, our exit from warp lands us in a familiar approach lane, with no immediate hazards or concerns whatsoever. Commander Xanatov can barely believe her good fortune.

At Footfall, Opiter receives a message from the Mechanicus cruiser Foresight . The rest of us also get mail, but it lacks plot significance. Lord Captain Machariel asks Opiter to send a message to the Mechanicus asking if they want to send an observer with us to the space station. Marneus also gets a message encrypted with an old Machariel cipher. It claims that the sender has information that he needs. He orders us to stop at Footfall and head to the location specified by the sender.

JasonMarker said:

Link seems to be dead...

Hooooooly crap we're behind. Let's see what House Machariel has been up to, shall we?

Nagivator Simoom and Seneschal Corvus suddenly come down with space dysentery.

The Foresight wants to send people aboard to observe our drives. (Remember that Opiter Castus got mail from them last session? Of course you don't.) Opiter would rather prefer not to have observers in his engine room, but refusing would put us in an awkward position. Lord Captain Machariel invites one aboard to discuss it, and so at the appointed hour, a Tech-Priest teleports aboard. Marneus invites them to help repair the space station, and they're on board with that plan. An arrangement that will benefit everyone - how very un-Imperial of us. They send over about 300 human and 100 servitor-grade Mechanicus staff.

We depart Footfall, piously hoping that Jahazer's assistants land us someplace other than the interior of a star. They course will require twenty days in warp. Our chances of avoiding warp storms suddenly seem awful low. We suffer from strange dreams and odd whispering sounds in our waking hours, a phenomenon we attribute to the ship's ghosts being uncomfortable with the Mechanicus aboard. We also experience a ... warp storm! The edge of the Cauldron tosses us about a bit, but we can ride it out without serious difficulty. On the far side of the Cauldron, we experience further hauntings, but nothing worse. As we arrive, the backup navigators outdo themselves, dropping the ship safely out of warp on an anticipated vector.

Our Augery Arrays sweep the system, and the senior operator reports that they've sighted another ship. It's docked at the station, and it's not one of ours. The Lord Captain orders us to sneak up on it, forcing Anastasia to attempt the Run Silent maneuver.

Your faithful correspondent got paged to deal with a situation at work, and when I returned, Solo Drakban was shooting at Orks. The dorsal battery scores three very solid hits on the Ork vessel before the filthy greenskins become aware that the bringers of the Emperor's Grace have entered the system. The Ork ship performs an emergency undock, which breaks the seal on the docking tube and spaces a bunch of orks. Return fire from their prow guns goes wide. With the Orks undocked, the Lord Captain orders weapons free. Anastasia, fearing the greenskins will try to ram, Comes To New Heading and performs astonishing feats of flying, dancing handily around the enemy in a most un-Imperial kind of way. Jotham's attempt to inspire the ventral weapons crew with his militant brand of religion fails, and none of Drakban s weapons land sigificant hits. Our void shields deflect the return fire, and our salvo, more accurate now that we're on a steady course again, knocks out their filthy xeno sensors. With the ships settled out on their new courses, Marneus' plan has worked - the Orks are chasing us away from the station. Our fire nails them, delivering solid hits from both keel and dorsal batteries, and inflicting significant damage on the Orks. The xeno Captain begins lining his ship up to ram, but Anastasia runs rings around him. Their attempt to overdrive their engines causes them to stall out briefly, making it much easier for us to escape their ramming efforts. Sadly our shooting takes a turn for the worse, and the Orks, overdriving their engines make up some distance on us. Anastasia cuts inside the Orks, forcing them to go wide to get back on a ramming heading. Shooting continues to be inconclusive as the Ork ship gets back on our tail... until the Ork captain blows a roll and his drives fail completely, making him our ******. We begin to circle around, and the maneuvering throws our fire off. The Orks' salvo as we try to leave their firing arc takes out our Gellar field. Opiter gets Lucius to attempt to lock weapons on, and with a little help from the Machine Spirit, he succeeds. Sadly we can't penetrate their armor. As we come around behind them, our keel weapons score a critical hit, causing their tech sprites to go surly and disabling their shields, warp drive, life support, bridge, and macrocannons. At this point the GM rules that we can just park behind them and blast away until they all die. Huzzah! Opiter repairs our Gellar field and all's well with the world, except for the casualties.

Lucius sends a message home telling them that we arrived and they should send tugs. Oops, doubles on the roll to send the message! Warp ghosts fill the air and float about howling in pain. You learn to live with that sort of thing on a haunted ship.

The Lord Captain orders a scan of the station. We discover that it's armed, which makes for a nice bonus. It also has a couple thousand Orks aboard. We board the station and attack some Orks. Cleanse! One awesome kill-crazed montage later, we've stunned, boltered, spaced, or incinerated a couple thousand Orks, and the station has been reclaimed for the God-Emperor of Mankind. Jotham tends to the wounded, but we have only ~50 killed.

A week later, more Machariel ships arrive to help with the work. Our efforts will now be supported by a couple large cargo ships and a few small gunboats. We begin by dragging the station out of the inner system into deep space - not through the warp, just in real space. It takes a few weeks to drag it out through the gravity tides, rocks, and other nonsense, but that just gives us time to work on the ship and the station. We get both fixed up, and partial life support on the station - partial meaning the air is foul and gravity is fractional, but you won't die if you take your suit off.

Anyway, the crew of the Solo Drakban have towed their newly partially salvaged ancient space station out to the edge of the system. To improve our sense of security in the system, we attempt to more thoroughly scout the ruined world in the system. Our augur arrays suggest it's a ruined Hive World. We now get into a low orbit and begin intensively scanning. Anastasia Xanatov gets us nice and low while Opiter Castus aids the Machine Spirit to get the most of our sensors, and our systems reward their hard work with a bounty of data. Roughly half the surface of the planet shows signs of development, focused around three hive cities, now fallen in. We feel certain this was an Imperial colony before something bad happened to it, centuries ago. Opiter identifies a Mechanicus shrine of unfamiliar type (which he unsurprisingly expresses a wish to visit). Bors Tovon, examining the damage, opines that it looks like the result of a full scale planetary war. We try to identify signs of Orks on the planet and don't see any. Maybe there aren't any. We laugh at our foolish optimism.

Seneschal Livienne Corvus, acting in the Lord Captain's stead during his illness, receives preliminary scan reports from the ship's shuttle pilots (in triplicate), who have been investigating the wreckage in space. Aside from the expected debris, they found hull plates from Imperial Navy ships. Analyzing the aggregated set of all the scans of the planet and the debris from the void, she begins to pick out ships with something wrong about them - one immediately suspects Chaos. Wreckage on the planet includes normal looking Space Marine Drop Pods and wrong-looking ones. Yep. Chaos. She can't keep us from going planetside, so she puts a team on standby to recover our bodies.

Opiter retrieves his servo-skull from the bridge. Who knew he had one hidden there? Well, all of us know now. He gets in the shuttle along with Bors, Jotham, Lucius, and a company or so of Armsmen. Anastasia pilots our shuttle, of course, and gets us safely to the planet. During her approach, our ship gets sensor painted a couple times. Either the survivors have kept some technology, or some automatic defenses still work. She decides to land anyway, and puts us down in a decent spot with nic balmy weather. We open the hatches, and as soon as the shuttle engines shut down, the silence becomes palpable. The wide open sky begins to really bother poor Lucius, who comes from a hive. From the ground, the scale of the hives becomes really apparent. The mind can scarcely visualize the sort of carnage required to do so much damage to a Hive. We immediately see dead Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. We wipe down some shoulder pads and see Iron Warriors and Thousand Sons Chaos Marines. The loyal Marine uniforms suggest they might have been Sons of Orion and Flame Wardens, Blood Angel and Salamander successor chapters respectively. Lucius' psychic powers still detect a faint whiff of Chaos.

We head inside thought the nearest bay door, or rather gaping hole where the bay doors were smashed in. Opiter sends his servo skull ahead to scout, keeping it just a hundred meters or so in front of us. The defenders had tried to fortify the inside of the hive, so the skull finds much evidence of interior fortification, and lots of remains.

Back on the Solo 's bridge, the PO in charge of an Auspex station reports company in the system. The bogey appears to be a warship, perhaps cruiser sized. inbound to the planet. Livienne orders the landing party recalled to the ship, and the landing party makes no argument. Opiter grabs a shoulder pad from one of the loyalists on his way out.

Victrus Karrellius tries to log on to the bogey, and can't. It ignores hails. It closes the planet and flank speed, then turns broadside to the ship. As it does, there's a screaming sound in all our frequencies, and Livienne realizes she can see through it. Jahazer Simoom confirms that the warp has not intruded into real space, meaning the ghost ship must be an apparition, not an actual warship. He also identifies it as a Hellion -class heavy cruiser, configured be a carrier for Stormtroopers. The Navy sold the last Hellion 4500 years ago. Jahazer manages to decode the ship's transmission and determines that it contains the coordinates of the planet. The landing party desires to land again, now that we know it's a ghost threat, but Seneschal Mom wants us to be very safe. Lucius hears whispers of Traitor Legions and heretical forces, couched in language that suggests he's overhearing Imperial Navy orders. Once Anastasia turns our shuttle around and gets us back into atmo, Lucius stops hearing the whispers. About an hour later, the ghost ship fades out.

On our second approach, we get pinged again, and this time we try to triangulate the source, but we can't isolate it down to any fine point. We go back to where we started and begin looking around the Mechanicus facility. Eventually we find a terminal, which Opiter begins to interface with, hoping to mine vast tracts of data from it. First he'll need to get it working, which he does, and gets to watch a millania-old system boot screen. Once he gets in, he finds that, shockingly, many systems remain offline. To really mine this place, we'll have to go around restoring many other systems. He can, however, score a map of the public spaces, such as the chapel and museum. Lucius reminds us that the facility is haunted. Opiter reminds him that we live on a haunted ship, so same-same, right? As we mock the psyker for his fear, the servo-skull finds something, chitters, and begins to investigate a junk pile. It gievs bump to some trash and uncovers a genuine robot, complete with apparently-fatal battle damage. It mounts a massive assault cannon, which has Bors panting, though the lack of ammunition somewhat damps his spirits. We head for the museum. As we go deeper into the facility, we stop seeing Iron Warriors armor - apparently they didn't make it this far.

We find the museum with a pile of Space Marine corpses in front of it. A group of Imperial Fists apparently defended it to the death, and succeeded - the museum appears unbreached. We order our armsmen to start moving the bodies, both to open up a way in, and to search for any records. Sure enough, they find an Adeptus Astartes dataslate. The planet was called Haldr. The Imperial Fists were contacted by another chapter because the loyalists knew the Iron Warriors would be there. A Chaos cult had grown on the planet, and they eventually invited the Traitor Legions in.

Eventually Opiter opens the museum door. As soon as he opens it, the lights come on - whoah. Life-size dioramas of Mechanicus history and their work on Haldr fill the room. We also find a medical bay. Opiter and Bors then search for access to the lower, more secure levels of the museum, and eventually find one. It contains workshops, and Lucius finds a computer terminal there. Sadly it has no power, so we're going to need to get a generator powered up somehow- but Opiter knows how to get that done. Throughout all this, Lucius has been hearing psychic screams, but they grow muffled when we go downstairs.

The generator appears to provide power for the whole building - our armsmen throughout the facility report that the lights just came on. The system reports that a state of emergency remains in effect for the entire facility. Then the system begins bring up the automated defense and targeting systems, which briefly scare the willies out of everyone before Opiter shuts them down.

Back in the ship, Anastasia gets a request for landing coordinates for her position. She asks them to authenticate. She also detects encrypted transmissions sent her way, which she relays back to the ship. Her radio tech calculates that the transmission is coming from roughly the same place where the pinging of the ship originated. She flies off to investigate without bothering to inform the party inside the Mechanicus facility. (It's funnier that way!) Flying a search pattern, Anastasia figures out that the pings only happen when she's over a specific area, which they quickly triangulate down to about a square half-kilometer. She also relays the signal up to the Drakban . Eventually one of the shuttle crew spies movement on the ground inside their search perimeter. Anastasia tries to fly even lower to investigate. A close look at a topo map of the ruins convinces the shuttle crew that there are life forms and power sources, based on moving heat signatures, EM radiation, etc. Anastasia reluctantly reports her findings to Seneschal Wet Blanket. The Seneschal responds by telling her that according to the ship's Cogitators, the signals sent to the shuttle carry Adeptus Astartes encryption. She orders the Drakban to reply with her formal Imperial credentials, including her registry, Warrant, etc.

The exploration party in the museum decide to run a cable from the surface to the terminal and rig a transmitter to let us upload the contents of the museum data core to the Drakban . Bors, Lucius, and Jotham decide to lead the search party to the presumed Space Marine site. We discover the source of the transmission is underground, requiring us to dig. After much digging, we find a bunker, complete with airlock-style door and entry keypad. We knock and get no response, and we don't know the keycode, so we summon a salvage team with a torch to cut it open. Interior overpressure pops the door out like a cork, and we send a couple armsmen down the ladder. They immediately call for us to join them. At the bottom of the hatch, four Space Marines lie on top of sarcophagi with their bolters, with a dreadnought watching over them. The Dreadnought shows Iron First regalia and carries a multi-melta, dreadnought claw, and some sort of large bore cannon. One of the Marines has a chapter banner. Lucius discovers that one of the Marines is a Librarian. We call for help from Drakban , which sends us a bunch of medical staff and more armsmen.

Meanwhile, Lucius tries to thought-send to the Dreadnought. Nothing happens... until a few minutes later, when a blinking red light on its readout panel suddenly stops blinking and turns green. Lucius announces that it might be waking up and then mutters that it might have heard his thought sending. Sure enough, it transitions from its slouched posture to being fully upright, makes a brief burst of white noise from its speakers, then scans the room. He introduces himself as Brother Lysander and accuses us of being late. We tell him what year it is. He can't believe that, since they were deployed in M47. He explains that the five of them are all that remains of the loyal Marine presence. He asks about the situation, inquires as to whether we all speak Low Gothic, and identifies Opiter as a member of the Mechanicus. Lysander says that "they didn't find it while they were here, so it must still be here... if it was ever here at all." He's concerned that we haven't found it... although it may be just as well, since we don't know what it is.

While the conversation with the dreadnought continued, Bors was summoned to the surface to speak with an armsman. He reported that a fire team had found signs of life but the team went silent shortly after, just a few clicks away. Bors immediately requested four more fireteams to arrive at his location to setup a perimeter replete with Tarantula turrets while the excavation team worked.

Anastasia decided to fly over the last reported location of the missing team. They found life signs, small signs, near rubble that the lost shuttle was located at. They grab a fire team and send them in to investigate while the shuttle provides overwatch. They find the inside of the shuttle burnt and totaled, the dead pilot still in his seat.

Anastasia reports her findings and its decided to investigate the life signs as they could be weak humanoid signs. The team soon finds dropped equipment, spent magazines and other signs of the previous team. The surface team that was left at the burned out shuttle soon seems to spot something in a hab some distance away. They fire and manage to score a hit, blasting something out of a window.

As they move to see what they killed, waves of chitinous vermin pour out of the windows of the hab. The team inside the rubble report that they found dead versions of the leggy, toothy monsters, each about 2m long, and that they recovered 3 of the missing fireteam. Anastasia is able to land and retrieve the teams before anyone is brought down by the monsters.

Lord Machariel decides to maneuver the Drakban into the upper atmosphere so they can blast the LZ to smithereens with macro batteries. He pilots the ship himself and then allows Victrus and the gun crews to obliterate the area after Anastasia evac'ed the teams.

The excavation team finally reaches the bay door of the underground bunker and is able to open it, allowing Lysander and the Marines to be retrieved. They board a lighter and head to the Drakban first, soon joined by the other teams and the Drakban soon has all her crewmen back.

Jahazar was able to detect the trail of a second Ork ship that had left before they had their own encounter wit its sibling. The Warp is disturbed around this planet, hints of Chaos and ghost ships visible in the memories of the Immaterium.

Machariel and Livienne go to the lighter bay to speak with Lysander. They introduce themselves and Marneus announces that he is the captain of the vessel. Lysander haltingly speaks with them about his chapter and his need to contact them. He mentions that there used to be four habited planets in this system. Jahazar double checks the star charts and the asteroid belts in system could be the results of planetary eradication. Lysander says that if the planets were destroyed, it was Imperial forces that did it to keep their enemies in check. Lysander asks to be taken to Port Wander and Machariel says that it will be done shortly after they make some salvage trips to the planet.

The senior crew members convene and make plans on what their next steps should be. A debriefing of the armsmen on the planet revealed little new information concerning the xenos monsters. They decide to salvage the Space Marine armor still left behind at the Mechanicus site. Stern orders are given against taking any souvenirs and treating the dead Marines properly as they're exhumed. They send 24 hours salvaging before they decide to leave for Port Wander. The ship stops by the station, finding renovations well underway though strides still remain to be taken.

They make the journey to Footfall at marvelous speed, waiting only an hour to send out astropathic communications. They jump back into the Warp for Wander and soon are found to be thrown about, taking 4 times as long than it should have, seeing ghosts (yawn), having nightmares (yawn), suffering through bouts of madness that result in 4% of the crew perishing, a calm week, a incursion of nasty warp critters running around the ship, and then a warp storm before we begin to receive hails from numerous ghost ships. Lysander mentons that the battle for the planet revolved around rumors of a complete STC, but he doesn't know what happened after they sealed themselves into the bunker. Jahazar tells Anastasia that she has the comm, then wonders aloud where we are.

The crew see an arcing structure outside, obviously part of an ancient space station but the lights are on and the ship is being hailed using Imperial Navy encryption. They're soon joined by some Cobra destroyers and so Machariel, Livienne and Bors soon board a shuttle for a Tyrant class battleship. They meet with an admiral and they're told they're in a restricted area. Jahazar, back on the Drakban , and Victrus discover they're at the Jericho Gate, a spot in the Jericho Reach (On the other side of the galaxy!) where a massive crusade has been undertaken. Machariel is told he has 36 hours to vacate the area and will be under quarantine but the good Captain promises it won't take that long.

Lysander is waiting for the captain when he returns and they explain that there was a navigational error but things will be remedied soon. Marneus mentions that Lysander could speak with the admiral to corroborate their story before they leave, just to avoid any potential problems. Lysander discovers that Imperial Fists are actually operating in this segmentum and so they will him off, along with the salvaged and recovered Marines, with the Navy here. Marneus confers with Jahazar about the Jericho Gate, which he believes has a sister gate somewhere in the Maw. He thinks that going back through the Gate should allow a rapid transit back to the Maw.

They make the transit and make it to Port Wander with little problems beyond some ghostly Space Marines asking after Lysander.

The session opens with the GM asking us to make Toughness rolls. That can't be good, and sure enough, Jotham Lentillus, Victrus Karellius, and Livienne Corvus, along with several members of the crew begin to feel under the weather. Over time the sick begin to feel notably poorly, and by the time we reach Port Wander, several crewman have died. The Lord Captain orders a full sweep of the life support system to try to eradicate the contagion. The sickness spreads fastest on the lower deck, amongst those who did not visit the planet. That suggests that contrary to our initial theory, it did not come from the planet. Opiter Castus calculates that infection came from near the skin of the ship, low on the hull - near the water tanks. Opiter recommends spacing the infected ratings, just to be sure. Chief Chiurgeon Elisabet Undynne says the disease spreads with unnatural slowness, suggesting some sort of controlling power. Jotham's rites, though performed with considerable fervor, cannot eradicate the disease.

The Lord Captain calls a meeting of the senior officers and suggests that we may have picked up a demon plague in the Warp. Navigator Simoon suggests that he and Astropath Holt walk the ship using Psyniscience. Marneus approves, and suggests that the two split up, each taking a security party with them, so as to cover the maximum possible amount of ground. Bors goes with Lucius and Marneus goes with Jahazer. Marneus also orders the members of the Astropathic Choir to form additional parties.

Their search turns up traces of the Warp moving around, but they have trouble finding anything concrete. Then suddenly they move into a new compartment and find it full of dead bodies, horribly dismembered, with their parts stacked like cordwood. The officers can take it, but the fireteam break. Jahazer notices three sets of bloody footprints leaving the compartment - funny-shaped footprints. Some sort of icky fluid - bile? - has been splashed on the bodies and the bulkheads. Marneus orders Jotham to make a team of walking infected and cleanse the room.

Opiter has a good relationship with some medical professionals in the port, so he makes a call. His Mechanicus friends agree to send over some Magos Biologis teams.

Jotham and his team put on voidsuits to try to limit the contagion and spread beautiful cleansing fire. Entering the compartment, Jotham gulps, but his faith in the Emperor allows him to maintain his calm and enter the chamber. Fwooosh! We then collect and space the ashes.

Lucius' crew have an uneventful few hours, although he catches an occasional trace of Warp, or hears a sort of chittering noise. (The Others? Hard to say.) He warns the team that subtle bits of heretical energy surround them, which predictably has some small impact on morale. As they near the water tanks, Lucius realizes that there's definitely something alive down there... making weird skittering sounds. As they approach the compartment in meat space, the noise gets clearer. Bors asks someone else to open the hatch for him, so he can blast whatever's inside with his heavy bolter. As they open the door, the lights pick up a veritable carpet of something toothy and horrible. Bors calls for grenades and opens fire with his heavy bolter. Heinous violence ensues. The violence pisses the creatures off and they rush the hatch. Luckily the Armsman at the door has some sense and slams the door shut in the daemons' teeth right after the rest of the team throw their grenades.

They check in with Opiter, who tells them how to get out of that section of the ship, allowing Opiter to seal it off and then vent it to space. As they retreat, Bors and Lucius realize that the daemons have gotten into the intra-deck machinery spaces. Other officers begin to head for the infected zone. The Captain orders Condition One throughout the ship. Jahazer and the Captain try to follow the footprints and find that they begin to pick up some "stench", which grows stronger as they track down their quarry - a scent which, combined with the large size of the tracks, suggests it must be something much bigger than Lucius' mouths full of teeth. Marneus asks Livienne to requests specialist assistance from the station. She manages to attract the attention of the Inquisitors, who quarantine the ship and board it. Whups. Our reputation in Port Wander may have just taken a major hit.

Yeah, the ranking member of the Ordo Malleus in Port Wander comes aboard with a bunch of Arbiters and goes over every little detail of ship's operations he can find, looking for any little thing he can blast us for. We must be punished for interrupting his game of Skull Polo. Of course, Livienne has to try to protect the ship's rep despite being sick, which has to interfere with her mojo somehow. Opiter explains that he can't unseal the sealed sections of the ship, making it impossible for him to meet with the Inquisitors, or for them to come down below decks.

Marneus and Jahazer's team hears screaming, and they go running toward it. They find some sort of thing hacking the crewmen in the compartment to bits. Asked to describe the thing, the GM explains that it looks pretty much like a Plaguebearer. They're wearing butcher's aprons, splattered in blood. Jahazer flinches in the face of such Warp evil and hesitates. The Armsmen go all to pieces. One of them vomits on Marneus and then tries to cut Marneus up with a sword, but Marneus parries. Another one goes for Jahazer, but Jahazer leaps aside and turns his Lidless gaze upon it, to no effect. Marneus' foe misses him, but Jahazer's covers him in horrible, caustic, disease-ridden vomit, causing him no small discomfort. Jahazer one again avoids the followup attack with the Plaguebearer's sword and once again tries the Lidless Stare. This time he catches it square and puts a mighty zap on it, stunning it for three rounds. Normally that would also give it a little insanity, but we all agree Plaguebearers don't care. Marneus' foe once again parries his attack, but it can't manage any offense of its own. Jahazer, seeing that his foe has been stunned, draws his bolt pistol and executes it. Unfortunately the next one catches him with so much vomit that it kills him outright. He falls to the deck, covered in flaming Warp vomit. The shock of seeing his Navigator bite it scares Marneus so badly that he picks up another Insanity point. After giving the matter its due deliberation, he turns and runs away, a lot.

The Inquisitors have forced Livienne to give them full access to our comms, so she and they just heard Jahazer melt and Marneus run for it. The Inquisitor demands Marneus' presence on the bridge immediately and orders his Arbiters to arrest Livienne.

Marneus runs into Victrus' group and orders them to follow him. He then turns to lead his new team back into battle.

Lucius feels the disturbance in the Warp when Jahazer dies.

As Victrus arrives, he sees the daemons doing their thing, and in short, he is afraid. In fact the fear freezes him in his tracks and drives him a little insane. Luckily his fireteam have been hardened by their experience and don't run - they form a firing line and let loose. A couple Armsmen get badly hurt and accomplish nothing. They may be out of their league. Victrus overcomes his fear and blasts the crap out of one of the daemons with his bolt pistol, getting his Righteous Fury on and absolutely obliterating it with head shots. The Armsmen dutifully continue firing, and this time their mass lasgun does some good, although they can't do the sort of crushing damage that a bolter can.

The remaining officers and kill teams head toward the Captain but run into four more daemons at about 50-60m range. Whups! Lucius faints. Jotham orders his men to open fire. Sadly they miss. Opiter fires his bolter and puts two rounds into a Plaguebearer, which certainly wakes it up. Bors deploys his notorious heavy bolter and kills one outright, then walks his fire onto the next one and blasts it right back out of the compartment. Jotham uses his flamer and sets one of the daemons on fire. Bors' fireteam miss their shots. Bors fires his heavy bolter again and jacks up another daemon. Jotham's armsmen miss. Opiter hammers his target and makes it regret getting out of bed. Bors' armsmen shoot the previously knocked-back daemon in the head, hurting it and cooking off one of its ears. Jotham sets the remaining daemon on fire, and then armsmen kill it. Clearly, if you must fight daemons, it's good to bring a platoon of armsmen with you and meet them at long range.

Welcome back. We've been on hiatus recently due to illness and new babies and deadlines, but now we're back on track. I also see that I'm two game logs behind, so here goes.

Marneus, Victrus, and their combined fireteam of very frightened guards continue to battle Plaguebearers. The armsmen can't hit squat, but Victrus' bolt pistol gives the Plaguebearer a little anguish. Marneus also misses. Victrus hits it again, but his little pistol just doesn't make a big impression on something with a Plaguebearer's general high level of heinousness. Marneus, too, cannot seem to make an impression. However, after a quick reload, Victrus manages to catch it good, knocking the Plaguebearer flat on its ass with an exploded leg. The armsmen just keep missing their mark - perhaps they need to find their faith anew and start shooting with their eyes open. Sure enough, Marneus' men, perhaps cheered by the sight of the daemon with a blasted leg, manage to put a good volley into it. The daemon tries to strike an armsman, but then suddenly gasps as though it had taken damage. When it next tries to vomit, it begins to scream and shake. Then it grabs its head, makes a very odd noise, and collapses into nothingness. Silly daemon, reality is for humans. The Lord Commander announces his preference for waiting for backup, which happens along shortly.

As the searchers try to track down the remaining daemons, we stumble upon more bodies. Jotham cleanses them with fire while reciting the rites of lamentation. We stumble on to a horrific smell, which may be something we can use to track it. Actually the smell has Marneus' eyes watering. Opiter Castus asks his servo skull to begin tracing the smell, which at last gives us a way to track it without running into obvious ambushes. As we close in, the smell gets so bad we can actually taste it. Yuck. We find a machinery space full of people bits, and the thing left bloody footprints there. Quadrapedal footprints. Shortly thereafter, the servoskull finds the bad thing. It's 4-5 meters long, 4-5 meters high, and busily eating a work crew. Opiter freaks out a bit and starts making Stig noises. Bors slaps Opiter, which snaps him out of it, and then Opiter delivers the bad news to the group. Opiter recommends moving up a level and shooting at it from the catwalk. Bors would prefer to get to longer ranges. Marneus overrules him and orders the attack.

Bors gets off the first shot, or rather hail of heavy bolter shots, and inflicts seven hits. The hail of exploding bolts sends it back to the Warp in a long, reality-distorting, purple blast that knocks many of the party flat. We then deploy drive plasma to clean out the Nurglings and call it good. A few hours later, the crew who were feeling unwell begin to feel better.

Inquisitor Bask, on the bridge, tells Livienne that Marneus has shown great courage and fortitude. He then tells her to have the Lord Captain join him on the quarterdeck. Bask turns over the bridge to his second and goes to talk to the Lord Captain in the Lord Captain's quarters. Livienne goes along with them but the rest of us get to wait. The Inquisitor condemns our warp breaches, which Marneus points out were entirely incidental. The crew will need to be liquidated, and the senior officers will be debriefed and (implicitly) judged. The ship itself will need to be of service to the Inquisition, which would like to have more resources in the Expanse. Bask's adjunct will be staying on ship as an observer.

The Adjunct, one Drax, receives orders to observe and use his judgement.

Marneus calls for Bors and Jotham to join him, Livienne, and Drax. He explains that we need to pick the key competent and reliable crew members and feed the rest to the Inquisition. Opiter runs neural checksums against standard litanies to make sure his senior men have no parity errors of doctrine or faith. The Inquisition has some concerns about Opiter, though, and there's a mark against him in the file. Drax assures Marneus that he has no desire to interfere, which of course means he's going to be in an interfering bastard all the time. You just have to translate from Inquisitor-speak.

We repeat our usual recruiting method, involving preaching and sandwiches. Marneus' father also agrees to send us a few crew to help us get started. Between that and recruiting, we manage to scrape up a crew. Lots of people acquire things, but I choose to ignore most of that and comment only on Marneus' desire to award medals to the survivors of our adventures.

At the end of the session, we sail back to the station, and find out that the Orks have been back. Mendicant has been totally wrecked, and everyone is very happy to see us.

More hilarity. This is last night's log, fresh off the presses. I figured since I'd spent the previous few sessions kicking the hell out of my players, they were due for a break and some presents.

A quick backtrack: back at Port Wander, while Solo Drakban is fitting out, Bors Tovon comes to Marneus Machariel and explains that he needs leave right away, and isn't sure when he can return. Marneus encourages him to return someday, to which Bors agrees. There's just some trouble on his home planet that needs to be cleaned up. Well, we were recruiting anyway.

Our new Inquisitor inserts himself into the recruiting process, endeavoring to keep the corruption on the ship down to a managable level.

Marneus discovers that he father has sent help. Among other Machariel personnel comes some tall, blond, fancy-looking dude. He identifies himself as Roe Van der Weyden and explains that Talfore Machariel sent him. Marneus, grown somewhat suspicious, goes to look for the data packet confirming the provenance of this recruit. He finds such but also reads that Roe has killed an awful lot of people, and has demonstrated skill with both blade and gun. Marneus shows the file to Livienne and asks her to bug the newcomer's room. Talfore's message also indicates that the old man's health is getting worse.

Opiter Castus corners Livienne and discusses the possibility of using servitors instead of crew. Intriguing! The savings in food costs alone have the Seneschal's balances tingling. She ponders inviting the Mechanicus aboard in an attempt to sway them with our hospitality, but the Mechanicus have a reputation for not caring, and our ship has so recently been... under some stress... that perhaps it would be best to transact business elsewhere.

They fly to the Forge and meet with Magos Septimus Pollux. Opiter quickly explains our needs to the Magos, who responds that he's open to the idea, but they do not have sufficient quantity on hand to meet our need. They have about 3,000 now, where we need 10,000. They also decline to be hurried on the subject. The Magos then cuts the meeting short and hovers off. On the way back, Marneus buys a utility shuttle. Opiter, not to be outdone, buys himself a powerfist.

Anyway, back in the present, we once again arrive at Machariel Station , notice a bunch of Ork wreckage including a cruiser hulk, and that the station has her guns run out. It has many guns. Many, many guns. They hail us, we answer, and Captain Teodor Ziel, formerly of STV Mendicant explains that his old ship is a mess that will take a month to get operational, the other ships are in disrepair, and the station has some damage. We repair aboard the station and see that the Machariel crews have done a lot of work. Poor Ziel has been seriously burned and now looks even more alarming than he did before. The Orks showed up a couple weeks ago and none escaped, but now the station is out of ammo.

Marneus asks Jotham to show Roe and the new Inquisitor around the station. Solid. Jotham likes Inquisitors! We meet a nice petty officer who gives Jotham a map of the station, which makes the tour go rather smoother. The PO's data dump reveals that the station has a previously-unknown launch bay. Ooooh. Fancy! Roe worsens the mood by asking the Inquisitor, straight out, why he's there. Unruffled, Inquisitor Drax explains that he's present to observe and advise.

Opiter busies himself unloading servitors. Magos Yorke, leader of the contingent from MMV Foresight , explains about how what had been a relic is now a fully and operational battlestation, plus or minus a few cubic kilometers of ammunition.

Marneus meets with the other captains and sees that they're all pretty banged up. There were Ork boarding actions and other forms of mayhem. Ziel has set up operations around a large holotable. He shows what happened, and reveals that the Orks came out of the Warp right onto the station. How'd they know right where it was? Anyway, the fighting went on for two days, but the human forces eventually prevailed. Ziel sent men to board the hulk of the Ork cruiser and salvaged pieces of the Ork Boss's log. One of the surviving men could sort of read Ork (I sense heresy) and discovered that some human sent them here and told them they could loot the station if they kicked the Machariels out. The culprit had to be someone who knew where the station is, and we agree that the Mechanicus had no reason to do it, the Space Marines wouldn't have done it, we know we didn't do it... so maybe Lyssa Machariel, Marneus' sister?

Anyway, clearly we need to move the station before the Orks return, but we also need to keep an eye on the planet. That puts us in a tough spot. Marneus orders the station moved within the system and mines placed within the existing debris cloud. He also orders the ammunition that Drakban brought over distributed amongst the fleet. The station turns out to be armed with missile batteries and mega-melters, which means we can't rearm it. The camoflaged battery worked against us this time.

Ziel reports that the Augur captured several anomalous readings around the planet, which sound like recurrences of the ghost ship we previously encountered. He sounds oddly reassured when Marneus tells him it's just a ghost. Marneus them promotes/reassigns Ziel to command of the station and allows him to promote one of his former officers to command of Mendicant .

The Inquisitor asks whether we might have picked up some sort of Chaos device or token in realspace. Jotham tells him we've seen many signs of Orks and also some Traitor Legion armor on the planet. Oooooh, the mention of the Chaos Marines has Drax positively salivating.

Lucius Holt uses his brain powers to survey the station. He finds some sort of non-human psyker power around the core and gets permission from the Captain to grab a mess o' armsmen and investigate. He closes in, moving laterally to try to fix it, and fixes its exact location and a general sense that it's not human and not actively using psyker powers. Lucius tells the Sergeant of the Armsmen where they're going, and the Sergeant comes up with a plan for approaching it. Unfortunately, when they ask Lucius to point it out on the station map, he points to... the reactor core. They move toward it and begin to see graffiti on the walls. Then they find a nest. It's not clear what sort of nest, but it sure does look like a nest, made out of random crap you find on a station like power cables, packing boxes, and the shredded remnants of seat cushions. It's large, like something bigger than man-size is hanging out there. There are also metal chunks that look like ship hull plating, and beneath that, a rolled up burlap something. Lucius orders one of the Armsmen to open up the roll, and it's full of oversize tools that look like they were made by a four year old. One of the squad leaders uses his microbead to summon Lucius over, and explains that there may be a situation. Lucius decides that now would be a good time to report this to command, who escalates it up to Ziel, who summons Marneus, who sends reinforcements.

The reinforcements go past Jotham, Drax, and Roe, who decide to try to get in on this. Jotham immediately joins up with the troops, while Drax uses psynicience to find out what the thing is. It's not human!

Lucius and co hear banging noises, then swearing sounds in some filthy heretical xeno tongue. Eventually they see that it's a really big Ork in a work coverall, wielding a massive spanner-tech axe-thing, poking around in a disturbingly Orky way. As the troops try to sneak up on it, it spots them, and all hell errupts. The troops cut loose with their auto shotguns and fill the compartment with lead, but can't hit the Ork, which flees. From some compartment deeper in the reactor core, they hear it bellow, "It wadn't me! I didn't do it!" Lucius orders his men to close in. The Ork asks for parley in Low Gothic, then tries to wave a white flag to surrender. It keeps asking to speak to the Captain. Lucius prefers not to waver in his pursuit of the Xenos. Then the Ork threatens him with a Big Red Button, which, when uttered by a Mekboy in a reactor core, has a certain sense of finality to it. Then he starts talking through the station PA. Lucius, disgusted, uses a Psychic Scream to stun the Mekboy so the armsmen can close in again. There's a loud "beep" and then the armsmen close in, delivering massive shotgun execution. Turns out the Big Red Button was not, in fact, the station self-destruct. The Inquisitor arrives and uses Psychometry to discover that the "Off" button was supposed to disable everything on the station and open all the doors, including venting the place to vacuum. The Mekboy was part of the boarding party, saw something shiny, and followed his instincts. He had been the head Mekboy for the kroozer that was currently adrift outside of the station, and was with the boss when the boss took the contract for the raid. He took that contract from a fancy lady, whose face the Inquisitor sees. Lucius then summons Opiter to investigate this technomological mayhem. Opiter immediately asks about possible Orky traps, and is not pleased to hear that not only was there one, and not only did the Ork already try to use it, but the Inquisitor already has it. Oh well, time for the Mechanicus to take over.

Meanwhile, up in station traffic control, a ship just dropped out of warp on the other side of the system. She's actively searching for something. Marneus sends Drakban and Calamity, to investigate. Marneus orders the fleet to battlestations, but orders no active augury. Our pickets get out there in a big hurry, and as they close in, they discover that it's AAV Stalwart , a Space Marine Strike Cruiser in yellow and black livery, looking for Marneus Machariel. Acting Captain Anastasia Xanatov offers them all possible cooperation. The Space Marine Brother-Captain hails the ship and speaks at length with Commander Xanatov. He is actually charming and even smiles, a real smile, not simply a rectangle full of teeth where his mouth usually is. He seems genuinely happy to see her. This does not match up with our expectations of Space Marine behavior. He introduces himself as Brother-Captain Bartel of the 3rd Company of the Imperial Fists. Turns out that Bartel likes to meet new people and converse socially. Most humans find this both awesome and deeply bizarre.

Inquisitor Drax hands Marneus the Big Red Button. He also reports the results of the Psychometry, including the description of the woman in his vision. Marneus ain't no chump- he recognizes the fancy lady as his sister's Seneschal. He tries to feign ignorance of her identity, but the Inquisitor sees right through him.

Since the incoming ship is friendly, the station stands down. Ziel affects disbelief when he hears the news, then informs Marneus that the Imperial Fists would like to talk to him. When Calamity gets close enough, they politely request permission to dock, instead of demanding. This Bartel guy kind of wigs everyone out with his politeness and respect for us lowly humans. Pretty much everyone of rank joins the welcoming party. Bartel comes aboard in an ornate uniform in his chapter livery with a chest full of medals as opposed to the expected power armour. With him he has an escort of a half-dozen Marine Scouts, a fully armored Librarian named Aleksandr, and Brother Lysander, our favorite Dreadnought. Brother Lysander points at Marneus and says to the Brother Captain, "That's him. That's the one!" The Brother-Captain strides over to Marneus and nearly crushes Marneus' hand in a firm handshake and states that he's pleased to meet the Lord-Captain. Marneus, clearly flustered, asks how we can assist the Iron Fists, and Bartel says "That's not the right question to ask." Unsurprisingly, the rest of the Imperial Fists seem a lot less social than Bartel, particularly the Librarian who is locked in a staring contest with the Inquisitor. The Brother-Captain asks to speak with Marneus in private, although he clarifies that Marneus' officers are welcome as well. Marneus leads us all in, but when I say "all", I mean not Roe. Marneus comes right out and tells Roe he doesn't trust him. Whuff! Roe doesn't feel the love, but accepts the Lord Captain's decision with good graces.

Once we're all in private, Bartel tells us that the Imperial Fists consider Marneus to have returned Lysander from death and that they have his gratitude and that of the entire Chapter. He then looks square at Marneus and asks, "How may the 3rd Company be of service to House Machariel?"

Here's a little interlude, a letter sent to Marneus Machariel, our Rogue Trader, by his father.

Arkhamina's Lament
At anchor, Port Machariel

Son,
Here are the crew you requested. I can't help but notice that you seem to be going through voidmen at a rate that would make the Imperial Navy blush. Be advised that, contrary to popular opinion, trained, disciplined Able Voidmen do not grow on trees, and that the training of new men is both expensive and time consuming. The next time you lose an entire ship's complement look not to me to fill your watch lists for I have no more voidmen to spare. From now on you will need to get better at the press and recruiting, be more mindful of the health and well being of your crewmen, or learn to operate under complement.

I have sent you a new officer, one Roe Van der Weyden. He's an entitled, obnoxious little **** to be sure with delusions of grandeur and a chip on his shoulder, but he's surprisingly talented with blade and pistol and, most importantly, his father is a colleague of mine to whom I owe a favour. I have sent him to you in the hopes that you can temper some of his more wild enthusiasms and teach him his trade. While the favour I owe his father is important, it's not that important, and if young Lord Van der Weyden were to lose the number of his mess it would not affect House Machariel overmuch. In essence, teach him his duty to his house and his ship and do not coddle him, as it will only harm him in the long-run. Also, he is easily offended and loves a duel. He cut a swath through my commissioned and warrant officers before I shipped him out to you. Do not rise to his challenge, and clap a stopper over his dueling tendencies and easily bruised ego at your earliest convenience.

My health continues to deteriorate, to the point where I have turned over most of the day-to-day operation of House Machariel's business interests to your sister. She is a great comfort to me, and has retained the services of quite a remarkable chiurgeon. He has excellent references and, while so far unable to discern the exact nature of my malady, his professional manner and constant study of what he calls my “very interesting case” put me, if not at comfort, than relatively at ease. I hope you and your officers are in good health, and that your current endeavours bring glory and Thrones to House Machariel. I am proud of what you have achieved so far, keep up the good work.

I remain, as always, your father.
Talfore Machariel